ILWOO Photography Award winner, Seung Woo Back has continued to explore the theme of the Real and the Unreal in photography. Researched in meticulous detail, he again expresses this idea in his two series Blow Up and Utopia explored on the subject of North Korea; his Blow Up series triggers our attention to the censorship of North Korea and their authorities to control a national image; in Utopia, the artist questions us how images of the Other can be idealized and scandalized, depending on our biased gaze and expectation. As if looking at a panorama or a long film strip of 1970s era propaganda images, they are placed immediately after another creating a continuous flow and overall coherence. - text by IANN